Heads of Lettuce Score Well in Standardized Testing

(Denver – Green Garden-Grade Gazette – September 15, 2015)

Many varieties of lettuce continue to do well on standardized tests given by public schools all over the country and in Grand Junction. Chief indicators, aptitude and achievement tests, saw a marked rise in scores for Leaf and Butterhead lettuce, while Iceberg and Romaine strains did quite well in aptitude exams but finished lower in general achievement assessments.
Cabbage, measured by a completely different yardstick, fell somewhere in the middle range after data was analyzed. Evaluations of cabbage, as well as other prominent salad items, will be released Tuesday. Graphs, developed to determine if farmers deserve tenure or dismissal, suggest that the lettuce is coming in higher than 45% of the students undergoing standard exams.
The relentless pressure, to prove educational effectiveness in the classroom, caused many varieties of lettuce to prematurely wilt in the math and science segments. Red leaf and Oak Leaf fall into this category. Although tastier, these fluffier, often nuttier types are considered to be less intelligent and damned to the workaday world by educators. In short, they don’t test well.
Older cabbages did better than younger ones while shelf lives of Romaine and Butterhead could not compare to the performance of Iceberg in the crunch.
“Whether these tests chronicle knowledge gained over a period of time or are simply another whitewash job by your benevolent and federal gov’ment is up in the air,” said an originator of the California Achievement Tests.
The CAT, along with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Metropolitan Achievement Tests make up the meat of the standardized testing administered today in our schools.
Calling the improvements a triumph for all vegetables the test maker called for more opportunities and options for students finishing toward the bottom of the grade scale.
“We’ve got to stop fooling ourselves and direct non-academic students into other functional and fulfilling fields,” he stressed. “These tests were never intended to uplift some and cast others into the cauldron of failure. We don’t project success in life with such a rigid schematic. Why do the schools?” – Rickie Recesse